Title: Alone Together
Author: kbk
Disclaimer: "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", “Angel” and all characters are owned by Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy and various other people and companies. Not me. I make no money from this.
Rating: PG-13 - swearing
Summary: Buffy doesn't age. The others die. Short, depressed, quite random. Skips over a few decades. B/A - in a bad way - with mentions of B/S and A/C - in a bad way.

She hasn't grown older. Whether it is some quality of Slayers that nobody has before had the chance to discover, or (as Wesley seems to think) a side-effect of her almost-botched resurrection, she hasn't aged. Her friends and her family have - those that have survived - lines appearing on their faces, grey tainting their hair and vigour slowly leaching from their bodies. For the first decade or two they could deny it, say that she was simply aging well, but now it is clear and undeniable that she is unnatural. She walks outside at noon, still, to make sure she isn't a vampire.

When the End of Days comes (and this time it really is the Apocalypse, their researchers say, and she doesn't wish for Giles to be there for confirmation because she's used to doing without him) there is an underlying excitement in some of their extended "family" that Buffy simply doesn't understand. She realises that it is the part that used to be Angel Investigations, way back when, and decides it must be a prophecy. It always seems to be a prophecy with that lot, even more so than it is with her - she is supposed to be dead, after all. When she finally gets a chance to talk to Angel himself, he seems bemused by her ignorance. "There's a prophecy," he explains. He nearly continues, presumably planning to detail the circumstances of its discovery and translation and all the adventures they went through that relate to it - there are always adventures - but she tilts her head to an impatient degree, and he swallows drily at the reminder of her lover. "If we win, I become human," he proudly states. She blinks at him. "And?" she asks, unimpressed. He stares after her as she walks out of the door.

They fight. It's what they do, after all. There are enough of them on the side of Good that Buffy feels a little out of place. They all know who she is, and most of them seem to know each other, but somehow, in all her battling against Evil, she has forgotten how to get to know people. So when, in battle, she sees these people fall and die, one after the other, she doesn't become distraught. She fights on. And in the end, they win, and their casualties are fewer than she had feared. And when the battles are over, the prophecy that had been causing all the muted excitement is fulfilled - but it doesn't affect the expected vampire. And so the disappointed Angel falls once more into brooding and depression, as the ever-chipper Cordelia spends more and more time helping in other dimensions and the ever-resilient Spike spends his days killing himself with alcohol. Buffy mourns for them all.

Eventually, Spike's liver gives out. He was the last of the mortals from the old days, when she still believed in her power to make a difference. Buffy packs a few essentials and a box of photographs, and leaves. She wanders, for a time, barely staying in one place long enough for anyone to get to know her name, let alone notice that she isn't exactly normal. One day she realises that she must surely be the oldest person in the town she is passing through. It hurts.

She comes to LA, and finds him there, alone. She stays, for some reason she'd rather not think about. They still love each other, somewhere in the deep forgotten nostalgic pits of their hearts, and so they stay together through the centuries. They fuck and they drink and they avoid their sacred duties, prolonging their wretched existences even though it would be so much easier to leave the curtains open one morning (his body would set alight and their bed would be consumed in the blaze, with her still in it, and a funeral pyre is the ending two warriors should have, she is sure). But the sex is good, and the drugged oblivion is better, and maybe someday they'll find something worth living for. So they keep on going.

They can never be happy.